...pushing into user's throat some heavily modified UI and/or function (eg. the mouse gesture in 11.50) that would be nice. Keeeping a consistent and minimalist UI, yet without changing everything "just to see if that please some peers over the mountains"

Right now using 11.52 and don't plan to change anything with that : stable, plugins updates without annoyance, smooth, a good release. My father told me he upgraded Opera and had all of its UI messed up.